STRATEGIC CONVERSATIONS
It can be argued that once you are effectively engaged in management communication, every
conversation is a strategic conversation. If you are on message as a manager, it often follows that your
team workers are also on message.
It’s not that you have to be robotic in your responses. Indeed it is the opposite. You need to be actively
listening, using open and inclusive communication lines, engaging with others and integrating feedback
and innovative ideas into the organisational structure and culture.
Strategic conversations constitute the managed implementation or modification of vertical, horizontal
and lateral communication mechanisms with integrity and acknowledgement of the value of everyone’s
voice. It is critical for managers to ensure that these communication lines are open and supportive within
the corporate culture of an organisation.
Module 1
9
Many organisations have charts that lay out formalised communication lines. These lines must be
managed in the same way as the production line is managed – with efficiency and economy. Many
times work culture or (sometimes work overload) means that the formalised communication lines have
become dysfunctional. This may be because they are no longer appropriate to the daily life of the
business or they have become overpowered by personality, or perhaps they were never a true reflection
of how communication worked within the organisation. Unfortunately, this failure is not uncommon within
organisations, especially older ones.
Dysfunctional communication lines need to be addressed quickly. All processes need to be in balance
or manafers will risk leadership, management and communication issues that can cripple innovation or
perhaps even cripple day to day operation of an organisation. Each strategic conversation, at its core,
should aim to break down any barriers to effective communication.
Your strategic conversations should be inclusive of the more informal, shadow networks that happen in
every workplace without any formal structure or charter. They are the chat and rumour circles and they
are powerful. Many of the most creative and innovative ideas in an organisation are discussed in lunch
rooms, coffee shops, smoking enclaves or at the pub. Part of your communication brief would be to set
up appropriate systems within your organisation to harvest this information. Some managers see these
shadow networks as suspicious and, indeed, they can become a complaints’ club, but experience has
shown that inclusion and respect work just as well in the shadow networks as they do in formal ones.
People do change if they know that their voices are being heard.
Simmons contends that about 80 per cent of grapevine communications are on business related topics
rather than personal, vicious gossip. Moreover, from 70 to 90 per cent of the details passed through a
grapevine are accurate (Samson, Donnet & Daft 2018, p. 724; Samson & Daft 2015, p. 708). This would
suggest that the ‘grapevine’ is a powerful and accurate force and must always be considered within your
strategies.
Another important element to consider is the use of strategic conversations to identify your knowledge
workers within the organisation. Knowledge workers are the natural allies of a communicator and
manager. Often, they are the embodiment of the workplace culture. They are most likely to be the ten
per cent who pass on accurate information and they are usually respected and listened to by their work
colleagues.
Knowledge is not impersonal like money. Knowledge does not reside in a book, a database, or a
software program; these contain only information. Knowledge is embodied in a person; applied
by a person, taught and passed on by a person. (Drucker 2003, p. 287)
Once you start engaging in strategic conversations with a clearly defined purpose, you will soon know
the state of communication within the organisation. An application of the communications models and
tools covered in COM 12 Business Communications will help you identify what is going on (or not).
People will communicate their position to you because communication takes up most of your work time.
COM21 Management Communication